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Bad judgement by OFGEM
Jeremiah_Pariah
Posts: 5 Forumite
in Energy
In the recent debacle over the collapse of Yorkshire Energy on 5th December last year, it seems that a whole bunch of consumers have been caught in the middle.
With Yorkshire Energy, we were on the cheapest gas and power tariff we have ever been on.
I admit that those cheap prices may have contributed to YE's demise.
However, thanks to OFGEM and Scottish power we were instantly transferred to the most expensive rates we have ever been on.
Advice from this MSE site is that no switch should be attempted by the consumer until all is complete.
That is to say that acknowledgement and first bill from Scottish Power, last bill from Yorkshire Energy and credit, (because it always is credit) is applied to your new account.
14 weeks later and we are still waiting for this credit to be applied. SP have made such a long, drawn out and sometimes comical !!!!!! up of this take-up that we cannot wait to switch away to another provider.
I suspect that SP might know this and are hanging on to us as long as they can, while we burn up this very expensive energy mid Winter, with no possibility of switching until SP finally square up our account with the correct credit applied.
I have complained to OFGEM who dropped us in this particular hole in the first place.
Their reply?? "Complain to the Ombudsman."
Thanks OFGEM. Thanks Scottish Power.
You've cost us about £400 so far. And still checking my SP account every day to see if we are all square and correct.
With Yorkshire Energy, we were on the cheapest gas and power tariff we have ever been on.
I admit that those cheap prices may have contributed to YE's demise.
However, thanks to OFGEM and Scottish power we were instantly transferred to the most expensive rates we have ever been on.
Advice from this MSE site is that no switch should be attempted by the consumer until all is complete.
That is to say that acknowledgement and first bill from Scottish Power, last bill from Yorkshire Energy and credit, (because it always is credit) is applied to your new account.
14 weeks later and we are still waiting for this credit to be applied. SP have made such a long, drawn out and sometimes comical !!!!!! up of this take-up that we cannot wait to switch away to another provider.
I suspect that SP might know this and are hanging on to us as long as they can, while we burn up this very expensive energy mid Winter, with no possibility of switching until SP finally square up our account with the correct credit applied.
I have complained to OFGEM who dropped us in this particular hole in the first place.
Their reply?? "Complain to the Ombudsman."
Thanks OFGEM. Thanks Scottish Power.
You've cost us about £400 so far. And still checking my SP account every day to see if we are all square and correct.
2
Comments
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We're always told to do nothing when an energy company goes bust, just sit tight and wait for the SoLR to contact you, but after the Scottish Power fiasco I'd be tempted to start a switch the moment that the news broke !0
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The cheap tariffs were 100% why YE went bust. When they went, none of their tariffs, including their SVT, were profitable. All were below cost.
SoLR is chosen based on a number of factors when suppliers enter bids:- Price of tariff (sounds like everyone offered the same similar rates)
- How much will be claimed through industry levy (Scottish Power put up a lot of their own money to help pay for customers credits, reducing how much needs to be recovered from every supplier)
Every bulk customer migration is a drawn out process and unfortunately customers get left through the cracks if there is anything that could make the bulk transfer potentially incorrect.
At the end of the day, suppliers should put accuracy over speed. Admittedly it seems that SP are taken longer than one would expect for a SoLR transfer, however unless your usage is ridiculously high it wouldn't have cost you £400. 3 months of their rates for an average user is about £300. Whereas before 3 months with YE as an average user may have been £210-£240.
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You may wish to have a look at the Yorkshire Energy thread on this forum (although it is 223 pages by now!) Yorkshire energy ? - Page 223 — MoneySavingExpert ForumJeremiah_Pariah said:Advice from this MSE site is that no switch should be attempted by the consumer until all is complete.
That is to say that acknowledgement and first bill from Scottish Power, last bill from Yorkshire Energy and credit, (because it always is credit) is applied to your new account.
I'm not sure MSE (or OFGEM) necessarily advised waiting until all those steps were complete. The advice generally talks about "account set up complete" and waiting "until Scottish Power contact you"
Many on the forum initiated a switch away from SP early in the new year, as soon as the Gas and Electricity databases listed SP as their supplier and they had an account number from SP. At that point the switch is complete as far as the industry is concerned, the rest of it is just admin between YE and SP, which admittedly has taken a long time.
The only thing you can do is switch away from SP ASAP to better rates, and then chase up the rest. You don't say if you have a final YE bill yet, but that part of the process is out of SP's control.1 -
Gerry1 said:We're always told to do nothing when an energy company goes bust, just sit tight and wait for the SoLR to contact you, but after the Scottish Power fiasco I'd be tempted to start a switch the moment that the news broke !0
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@bagand96 Fortunately I wasn't with YE when they went bust, although they did supply me a year or two back and I found them excellent.I was with Robin Hood Energy and my SoLR is British Gas. That went well, existing tariff honoured, extended by a month and exit penalties abolished. I'd hadn't even been billed by RHE, no no problem with return of credit, but it seems that I was very lucky.I imagine that many of the problems have arisen because SP were already struggling as SoLR for Tonik, but Ofgem should have ensured that the SoLR they appointed for YE made adequate resources available.0
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I don't believe that I am saying this but Ofgem is damned whatever it does. The whole purpose of the SoLR process is to maintain continuity of supply, yet consumers want tariff protection; their credit balances protected (even at a cost to all energy consumers), and the ability to switch away immediately if they don't like the tariff on offer. I am not saying that SoLR process is perfect but unlike, say, the failure of a broadband ISP, consumers are not left without connectivity nor are they left out of pocket. The answer is simple: Ofgem should require suppliers to enter into a financial Bond to cover in full the cost of a failure thus ensuring continuity of supply, and full tariff and credit protection. No doubt, higher energy costs would then follow.0
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Gerry1 said:@bagand96 Fortunately I wasn't with YE when they went bust, although they did supply me a year or two back and I found them excellent.I was with Robin Hood Energy and my SoLR is British Gas. That went well, existing tariff honoured, extended by a month and exit penalties abolished. I'd hadn't even been billed by RHE, no no problem with return of credit, but it seems that I was very lucky.I imagine that many of the problems have arisen because SP were already struggling as SoLR for Tonik, but Ofgem should have ensured that the SoLR they appointed for YE made adequate resources available.
The YE SoLR to be honest I found OK (a minority view here I know!) It was slow, but it all worked out fine for me, I just sat on my hands and let it work itself out. I was fortunate with a few of the timings working in my favour, it appears I was in the first batch of YE final bills.
Most of the criticism, other than slow process, seemed to be from communication and confusion on the online account. Automated SP emails were sent at various points that didn't necessarily match where people were in the process, must have just been standard mailshots to the whole YE customer database. Online accounts initially had lots of missing data (meter reads or meter serials etc). Many were concerned by these issues and contacted SP, which didn't help, frontline call centre agents didn't fully understand and gave differing answers.
Other than switching away from SP as soon as I could, I just did nothing and they did get there in the end with accurate bills and credit balance applied. Frustrating as it is for many, SoLR does need some patience as a mass migration from a defunct supplier is not the same as a normal switch.
A cursory read of the Simplicity and GNE threads throw up exactly the same issues with BGE and EDF SoLRs.1 -
Strangely the SP tariff for ex-YE customers is proving (just now anyway) a better deal for our useage than anywhere else (having looked at 3 or 4 comparison sites). So I shall stick until I get the SP notification that they are going to change it and will look again then.
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@bagand96. Agree with what you say about Simplicity to BGE giving rise to similar issues. in fact even less information flow from BG Evolve than from SP and their online account system shows practically no useful information . SP might have been a bit slow at communicating and there was a degree of muddled info from CS agents,especially at the outset, but at least they did do things such as acknowledge a switch away was in progress on your account (which BGE don't..still showing my gas as supplied by them even though it switched on 5 March), raise bills if meter readings were submitted (again BGE haven't despite giving them readings), and set up a DD fairly quickly (BGE still haven't on my account).
But the whole process seems to be painful whoever is involved.0 -
Change management/ Incorporating a new system tbf is normally a process that would take much longer than a supplier has to run a solr.
Really difficult to blend the different systems and data together.
I think one of the reasons people are advised not to switch is that the industry can only manage one switch for a property at a time. So if the SOLR has already begun a switch would get rejected. But does mean if you get in before the solr you can switch away.
Though that would likely cause a lot of billing issues for the solr as well as they wouldn't be able to take over your supply but should now have an account for you.0
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